Unrelated Livejournal Prompt Responses
by Dragon of Dispair
Summary: Unrelated stories from LJ prompts: 12 - Jazz thinks hiding together is better than hiding alone; 13 - Daredevils; 14 - Finding a bit of home on an alien world; 15 - TFP SG "He had fallen, been shot down by Autobot warp cannons and now he was dying."
1. All Helicopters Are Crazy

Summary: Whirl's a crazy psycho who wants to kill him, but right now that's the only part of Springer's fragged up existence he can trust so it'll have to be enough

Notes: Based off a role-play at a recent convention and written in fic-form for tf_promptorama's weekly prompt "Leaders from any continuity or faction — Nothing to fear". This is seriously Continuity? What Continuity? with a bit of poking at the fourth wall because Springer is aware of how Continuity? What Continuity? his situation is/

Springer/Whirl if you tilt your head, squint really hard, and make a wish on the second star to the right for it to be so.

.

**All Helicopters are Crazy (Even Triplechangers)**

.

.

.

Springer was no mental powerhouse like Perceptor, but he wasn't _dumb_. All the universes collapsed into one, multiple Primuses, Unicrons and, well, everyone all squished into this one Here And Now... Perceptor had explained it but Springer had stopped listening. All he needed to know was would Wheeljack's giant Reset Button of dubious mechanical stability and even more dubious science actually work?

The answer: Probably, but first they needed to kill Unicron, defeat the corrupted Prime(s?), and cleanse the Matrix or else it wouldn't do a Primusdamned thing.

He didn't need the rest of Perceptor's lecture on Quantum Physics, String Theories, Chaos Mathematics and the Trousers of Time (and he was half convinced the scientist had made that last one up) to realize they were all fragged from the molecules on up.

Of course Whirl was having a grand time. This entire "Everyone who has been or has the potential to be a Prime in any universe has been corrupted into agents of ultimate evil" situation meant he was getting to kill everyone he'd ever wanted to kill but couldn't just because they were fellow Autobots. To Springer Whirl's glee just highlighted how Fragged Up Beyond All Reality this whole shebang actually was.

Because for the duration of this whole Crisis on Infinite Cybertrons lunacy he, Springer, had rather latched onto Whirl as his only real source of sanity and stability. The way the realities had all squished together had left Springer's memories a completely corrupted mishmash of two or more lives that left him seeing double every time he looked at his team. Kup - reliable old comrade and teacher or corrupted by the Dead Universe? Perceptor - geeky microscope or competent sniper? Chromia - mass murderer or Ironhide's mate? And while he _remembered_ Bulkhead, his fragged up processor didn't seem to have any memories _of_ Bulkhead. Was he a hot-headed spacebridge technician or a reliable if somewhat dim witted melee fighter?

(All of which paled in comparison to the pile of logic errors his memories had produced when they'd rescued Megatron from that cage. That mech seemed to change alt-forms every time Springer looked away for so much as a fraction of a klick.)

Or were they all both, like Springer himself - Hod Rod's best friend trapped on a lonely dark Cybertron and later advisor to the Prime, or long-time Wrecker promoted after Impactor's death who'd barely known the reckless loner?

Whirl though... all of Springer's memory-fragments agreed: Whirl was a batshit crazy psycho who wanted to kill everyone, including Springer.

That was enough to ground him and keep him moving toward the goal. Because if Whirl was here and was the same mouthy psycho Springer (mostly) remembered, and _Whirl_ believed that Springer was the leader of the Wreckers then that's who Springer was right now and the rest could wait until Unicron wasn't about to destroy the multiverse.

Of course leading the Wreckers was a bit like trying to herd cybercats, but he'd gotten them this far. And with a rescued Megatron standing beside him as they faced off against Optimus and the rest of the corrupted might-have-been-Primes there really wasn't much to do but shout _Wreck and Rule_ and dive in, but Springer's thoughts were on Whirl, Megatron, contingency plans, and what he, Springer, was willing to pay for this victory. Because even with both Megatron and Metroplex, the Wreckers were seriously outgunned and outmatched.

And while outgunned and outmatched was a sort of secondary Wecker motto, this was one fight they absolutely _Could Not_ afford to lose.

Springer doubted. He doubted himself, his circumstances, his team, his current allies... but he could not doubt Whirl. Whirl was going to finish this thing with Unicron, then kill Megatron (which really, Springer was fine with despite the alliance because Megatron had been totally lying about letting the Wreckers go after the corrupted Optimus Prime was gone; he'd even help Whirl do the deed), then round off his psycho wishlist by killing Springer.

Springer was strangely fine with that. "Bulkhead, you know that thing I had you fix?" _That thing_ was of course the giant cannon Whirl had scavenged from that earlier ambush which Springer had adamantly refused to allow Whirl to keep. The triplechanger was going to regret this, but... "Give it to Whirl."

...as long as Whirl's sudden but inevitable betrayal came after they won, Springer could live with being the last name on the helicopter's bucket list of people to kill.

Or not live with it, he thought, watching Whirl's eye light up as he practically humped the cannon, which expanded to almost the size of it's handler, then sprouted dozens of mini-cannons to augment the main gun.

"Now Wreckers," he called, even managing to pull Whirl's attention away from sexing his new toy, "Time to Wreck and Rule!"

They charged, Springer already firing his whirlwind gun to lay down cover for their advance.

Victory or death. Consequences were for after.

.

.

.

End

.


	2. A Whisper is Fear

Summary: Deadlock came back online first.

Notes: Written for tf_promptorama's weekly challenge: "Any character from IDW Transformers Generation One — Where Are We?"

I know that Deadlock had a lot more white on him than I'm describing here, but pretend with me, please…

.

**A Whisper is Fear**

_._

_._

_I was ready for love, I was ready for the money,_

_Ready for the blood and ready for the honey,_

_Ready for the winning, ready for the bell,_

_Looking for the water from a deeper well,_

_ — Deeper Well_, Emmylou Harris

.

.

.

**Day One:**

Deadlock came back online first.

He twitched, rocks shifting around him as they fell away. He pulled himself free of the earth's grasp. Red dark adapted optics flickered on, taking in his situation.

Dark. Damp. Rock.

Not much else to see.

He activated his emergency beacon and let himself slip into a power save mode. He'd conserve energy better like that, until he unarchived the protocols he'd need to survive longer. Or he might be found before he needed those old settings.

Not likely. A Decepticon could hope.

.

**Day Two:**

A stir from the darkness brought Deadlock out of power save. A trickle of power brought his weapon systems online. Minimal functionality. One shot. Already those long-archived starvation settings were rewriting his body's priorities, only overridden by survival protocols written when he joined the Decepticons that insisted that he could never, _never,_ be without a weapon.

One shot.

No matter. He was a _good_ shot. He'd either only need one, or he was dead anyway.

Red light from his optics bounced off the cold rock around him, almost too far into the infrared spectrum for mechanisms not similarly equipped to perceive, much less see by. His optics glowed, like all Cybertronians, but the light they saw by was so low-energy that, save the two points of light that gave away Deadlock's position in the dark, a higher-caste 'bot would still be effectively blind.

There… earlier the mechanism's engine had been cold making the gleaming red/white darker, more like the rock that surrounded them, but now with it rumbling online its own infrared light combined with the faint almost-infrared put out by Deadlock's optics to make the plating almost glow.

Carefully he timed his own movements to the creaking of cold joints and the skittering to rocks caused by the other's movement. He came up behind the other an leveled his gun at the back of the red/white helm.

The other twitched and finished levering himself up onto all fours, shook his head and started to push himself up further.

And stopped, helm _clink_-ing almost gently against the barrel of Deadlock's gun.

Deadlock heard the mech's systems pick up in alarm. Energon pumped faster in the other's frame, cables squeaked almost imperceptibly in the near-silence of the cave as they tensed, his engine turned over, weapons whined as they powered, yellow/grey winglets flicked in the very beginnings of panic. Optics clicked on.

Blue light blazed across the rock beneath the Autobot, reflected and refracted across the stone, tiny flecks of crystal embedded in the boring grey blazing into sharp cobalt stars.

Deadlock nearly pulled the trigger right there.

But he was reckless, not stupid. He didn't know how long he'd be in this cave. It was unlikely that the Decepticons would come looking for him. It was marginally more likely that the weak-sparked Autobots would come searching for their lost comrade. A living mech would make a better hostage than a corpse.

And if neither of their factions came for them… Deadlock should probably wait to kill him for his fuel. The energon in his corpse would go terribly _sour_ in the time between now and when Deadlock would need it. Bleh. Bad enough he was pulling up the starvation protocols he ran in the Dead End

Decision made, Deadlock pulled the gun away from the mech's helm and smoothly pivoted away with the same motion. The mech gave an aggressive shout as he spun and threw himself at an attacker who was no longer directly behind him. The Decepticon clicked his optics off as the Autobot's optics slid past him — with nothing but the darkness to contrast him with, his black and red plating was as good as an invisibility suite — then back on to watch the red/white and yellow/grey mech scan the darkness, cursing his attacker loudly.

What a waste of energy.

His own stealthy movements and calmly purring engine camouflaged against the panicked racket the Autobot was making, Deadlock stayed out of the Autobot's line of sight, where the betraying light of his optics could not be seen by his companion in the darkness.

.

**Day Three:**

"I know you're out there!" The Autobot's voice echoed faintly in the small space. "Show yourself!"

"You should power down," Deadlock whispered, pivoting out of the line of the Autobot's sloppy and panicked attack, just as he had the first. He continued when he was no longer in danger of being caught by the Autobot's flailing, "You're just wasting your energy."

The Autobot turned and charged…

… hitting nothing, just as before.

.

**Day Four:**

Deadlock stayed out of the Autobot's sight. The Autobot's red/white and yellow-grey plating practically glowed in the red light of his optics while the Decepticon's own black and red faded to nothing in the blue of his enemy's. He simply needed to ensure that the autobot did not catch sight of Deadlocks optics themselves.

He didn't even need to do anything; he simply tucked himself into a mech-sized gap in the rubble and watched. He only needed to click his optics off when the Autobot was looking his way, and the Autobot made so much noise it was easy to know when it was safe to click his optics back on.

Despite his surety that the Autobot couldn't find him in the darkness, he still only dared to recharge once the Autobot's own systems cycled down into exhaustion.

The Autobot spent more time in recharge than Deadlock needed, so he spent part of that time where he needn't be so careful of his movements to carefully start digging his way out.

.

**Day Five:**

The Autobot was red and yellow, he concluded eventually. No one would paint flames on his spoiler in white and grey. His soft chuckle sent his prey spinning, searching for the source of the sound.

No avail. The soft volume and faint echoes made it nearly impossible.

.

**Day Six:**

For the first time, he let the Autobot catch a brief glimpse of red optics, gazing malevolently out from the pitch blackness.

The Autobot raised his arms, but his weapons failed to power on.

He lost sight of Deadlock as soon as he clicked his optics off and moved away. He backed himself against the cave wall and lowered himself to the floor, red and yellow plating shaking.

.

**Day Seven:**

The Autobot didn't move; he just sat and stared out into the darkness, optics blind to the Decepticon only a bare touch away.

"Why haven't you killed me?" he asked.

A live hostage is better than sour fuel, Deadlock thought, but did not speak. He would not give away how closely he now sat to the Autobot, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the other mech's frame beating against his own starvation protocol cool plating. Instead he simply allowed the darkness to speak for itself.

.

**Day Eight:**

The Autobot was in recharge when Deadlock broke through the cave in to the outside. No longer invisible in the bright starlight, he looked back to the Autobot. He contemplated taking his hostage/prisoner with him, but he did not know how far he needed to go before he found the rest of the Decepticon garrison here and he had nothing to actually control a prisoner on the trek.

He contemplated killing the Autobot to fuel that trek. The idea was attractive. Deadlock wasn't — quite — fuel critical, and — again — he didn't know how far he would have to drive. But…

Deadlock had killed a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. No doubt he would go on to kill a lot more, but he'd never killed another for their fuel… and now, free of the suffocating darkness and the threat of imminent starvation, he found he didn't really want to. Killing another to drain his fuel lines was something that weak, desperate Drift eventually have done; Deadlock should _never_ have that need.

He folded himself into his alt-form and drove away, dark volcanic dust kicked up in his wake.

.

**Day Nine:**

Sunlight streamed through the hole in the rock, golden and cheerful and powerful with its ability to chase away the nightmares of the last week.

For the first time since he'd come online in the dark he could see everything in the cave around him…

… nothing to see but rock. The nightmare was still out there, somewhere.

.

.

.

_I found dome love and I found some money,_

_Found that blood would drip from the honey,_

_Found I had a thirst that I could not quell,_

_Looking for the water from a deeper well._

_ — Deeper Well,_ Emmylou Harris

.

.

End

.

.

The characters of Pre-Deceptions Drift and Deadlock has always fascinated me much more than that of Post-New Crystal City Drift has. I keep looking, but there just isn't a lot of fanfiction focusing on the Decepticon Dreadlock was outside of porn starring him and either Megatron or Turmoil. So I've actually been wracking my brain to try and write some (or even just one) not-porn Dreadlock stories, focusing on what sort of Decepticon Deadlock might have been. I'm still, however, feeling my way into IDW characterizations rather than cartoon G1 or bayverse ones, so ideas are thin on the ground.

Originally i had a much lighter sparked piece in mind, where Deadlock and Hod Rod spent several days snarking at each other in a cave, then Deadlock decides to leave Hot Rod behind without telling the other 'Cons about him being there (sparing his life)… then halfway through writing day two my brain started thinking about the roles of red light and blue light play in camouflage in the lightless deep sea, and mental-Deadlock said "Frag yes! Let's scare the slag out of Hot Rod."

Apparently my mental-Deadlock is just a really horrible person.


	3. Of Glitches and Grenades

Summary: Self-soothing can take on a multitude of forms. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it works better when someone else understands what's happening.

So… this was written for tf_promptorama's weekly challenge "SICs from any continuity — Working with what I was given" but it has has wandered so far from the prompt that I only hope can still be considered a fill. The first thing I wrote in my notebook really was: "TFP Ultra Magnus: This newest incarnation of the Wreckers are far from suitable Autobot material, but he works with what fate has given him" and "Wheeljack: One grenade — adapting to fluid circumstances?" and somehow my brain took those and decided to run with scissors and spit out… this:

.

**Of Glitches and Grenades**

.

.

It had been a hectic week. When he'd arrived, the Autobots (so-called "Team Prime"… ridiculous name. If it hadn't been Optimus _Prime_ he'd be making his objections to he'd put them all on report for unprofessional behavior) had been ineffectual and scattered. Not that he was discounting their accomplishments. Ultra Magnus wouldn't so much as dream off it. Standing alone against the forces the Decepticons could (and had) brought to bear against them for as long as they had was… remarkable.

… Would have been more remarkable if they'd followed protocol…

No. He shouldn't think like that. His Prime _approved_ of the laxness that had characterized the small group since they'd settled on this planet. He would not question his Prime. _Pit_. He'd seen how well it _worked_, and he had to admit he'd rarely seen a better group of Autobots, even if they were deplorable soldiers.

Still… he couldn't help but _think_…

…He couldn't help but _imagine…_

And so in what had to be one of the most pathetic of useless, self-indulgent, self-soothing behaviors he'd ever witnessed, he spent his time on watch at the perimeter of the human military base that was now their home and silently compiled reports. Not reports he would ever submit — no. If he submitted these he'd be inviting Ratchet to diagnose him with Logic-Loop Mismanagement Disorder (remarkably similar, at least in some of the symptoms manifested to what humans called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and he did not want to endure the cranky medic's idea of "therapy". He did not have LLMD. Nor did he have any of its related processor glitches — it was not a disorder to prefer that a military be run according to the strict protocols. Not at all. And he didn't need anymore nosy medics telling him about problems he didn't have.

So he carefully went through the Autobots' logs that had survived the destruction of their Jasper Nevada base, marking every incident of insubordination, refusal to follow orders, talking back to a commanding officer, breaking the secrecy edicts, destruction of Autobot-owned equipment, and every other bit of misbehavior he could find. He wrote out the reports and filed them in his own processor. Each report he not-filed soothed a bit of the anxiety he could never completely be rid of or even adequately explain.

… Check the infraction and pull up the appropriate form… fill in the details… sign it… archive… Check the next infraction and repeat… and with each one his axel relaxed, his suspension released indescribable tension and his plating loosened.

The rumble of a high-end sports car's engine coming up behind him undid hours of work. This particular 'bot… this _Wrecker_… had the fewest not-filed reports to his name, but only because the majority of the time he'd been on this planet could be filed — _not-filed_ — under one of the most extreme single infractions any of them had committed: dereliction of duty.

"Optimus sent me out here to relieve your from watch," Wheeljack said, his high performance engine almost drowning out the beginning of the sentence as he drove up next to Ultra Magnus and came to a stop, bumper even with his front grille.

"I am relieved, soldier," he replied automatically, feeling several wires relax in response. He supposed he should return to the base at this point, but Wheeljack hadn't said anything about Prime requiring his presence, and he was still too stressed to deal well with the sanctioned chaos within the base itself. Pit, if he tried driving back now his tires would likely squeal in over-torqued protest. So he stayed where he was instead, filling out imaginary reports and hoping that Wheeljack continued to feel no need to fill up the silence with inane chatter.

For an hour, just long enough for his suspension system to feel like it wasn't about to snap at the slightest movement, it seemed that Ultra Magnus' hope would be realized, but then the green and white Lancia heaved a great sigh from his vents and sunk on his own suspension. "We all got our own glitches, Big-M."

"That's disrespect to a superior officer," Magnus snapped out before he could help himself, and he flicked his wipers a few times in annoyance when he realized what he'd done. Maintaining the Wreckers' cohesion was more important than protocol — he _agreed with Optimus_ about that — and Wheeljack had such a distinct hatred of said protocol that he'd abandoned the Wreckers once rather than deal with Ultra Magnus and his adherence to it once before. Their situation on Earth was such that that they could not afford a repeat.

He fully expected Wheeljack to drive off in a huff, or snap back… both would have been in-character for the impulsive sports car, and Magnus prepared to swallow his pride and his (_nonexistent_) anxiety to apologize, but Wheeljack just shrugged with his entire chassis. "Put me on report," he snarked back, "What's OP gonna do? Put me in the brig?"

Even if Prime were so inclined, their facilities currently did not include a brig. Nor was the application of a… a _nickname_ sufficient enough an offense to warrant brig time. At most it was another black mark on an already saturated permanent record. Meaningless, and all it would do is attract Ratchet's unwanted attention. Still he filled out the appropriate form, then a second for the offense against Prime's designation, signed them both and archived them in his processor.

His wipers slowed their flicking across his dry windshield.

Wheeljack's rearview mirror had rotated to regard the blue semi-truck and Magnus ceased the nervous tick with a single loud _screeech!_ as he slammed his wipers down and forced them to stay there. Wheeljack just grunted in response, realigning his mirror to once again look out his rear window.

Magnus feared he'd comment, but instead the white car just said, "I'm really good at causing explosions," which caused Magnus to tilt his headlights in a slight frown. That had been too abrupt a change of subject. "Really good. Before I was transferred to the Wreckers it happened every mission. Energon depots, weapon caches, research labs, enemy ships… you name it: BOOM! You could almost say I was _compulsive_ about blowing the enemy up, rather than… I don't know… shooting them or something sensible like that." Ah… Now Magnus understood. Wheel jack believed that he could obliquely reference Magnus' problems by revealing a similar glitch of his own. "It's one of two reasons I only carry one grenade now."

For a long moment Magnus debated how to answer. On one wheel, he recognized that this was a step in the right direction. This overt demonstration of overly familiar behavior was a sign that he was becoming part of what Prime called a "family" and would lead to greater group cohesion and efficiency, and correspondingly to greater mission success and kill ratios. On the other, he wanted to reprimand Wheeljack for prying into the private business of a commanding officer. Processor spinning with the conflict, he couldn't help but flick his wipers once, twice, three times, before he managed to settle for a neutral, "I had always wondered at the origin of that particular quirk or yours," but then he _ruined_ it by adding in a disapproving tone, "It does not seem to have curbed your predilection for such displays."

He sank on his wheels. That was _not_ what he'd wanted to say.

But to his relief, Wheeljack laughed, the bright and only slightly self-deprecating sound cutting through the tension like a plasma torch. "Yeah, well," he gave another full-chassis shrug, "You didn't know me before I joined your unit. Believe me; the last week has been virtually explosion-free compared to what it was like back on Cybertron before the Wreckers were formed." He settled, then shifted, digging his wheels into the ever present dirt of this planet with his wheels. "We've all got our glitches and our different ways of coping. So… write your stupid reports, if it makes you feel better. I'm always gonna hate it when you do it, but it ain't gonna ever matter as long as it's the eight of us and the little bits verses Megatron and his goons." He laughed again, this time short and derisive. "Besides, I think the universe'd implode if you and me ever started getting along properly."

Was that disrespect? Given everything he knew about Wheeljack, both from centuries serving with him before he'd deserted and here on Earth, he thought not, so there was no incremental tensing of struts and wires as he replied, "That is most likely true."

Wheel jack made one last left-right motion with his front wheels, deepening the furrow he'd made, then settled, saying nothing.

Ultra Magnus took advantage of the silence to fill out reports, but despite Wheeljack's explicit permission to do so he still didn't file them properly. He just continued to archive them in his memory, but somehow the knowledge that Wheeljack… wouldn't… well, Magnus couldn't say that Wheeljack wouldn't mind, because he'd said that he _would_ but he'd still given Magnus the assurance that he wouldn't break up this "family" over it, given him _permission_…

A superior officer didn't need a subordinate's permission to put him on report for insubordination and disobeying orders and every one of Wheeljack's usual antics, but perhaps a family member did, because having that permission made the self-soothing more, well, soothing. HIs struts relaxed and his wires unkinked at a record pace as his signed report after report and archived them.

He was feeling almost giddy with relaxation by the time he was done. Wires that hadn't been properly aligned in centuries suddenly popped back into place with an accompanying tingle of charge that left his processor fuzzy, almost drunk. The core of tension deep in his spark that he refused to acknowledge was still there, but… maybe it was the tipsy, overcharged feeling that made him brave enough to ask, "What is the other reason you carry only one grenade?"

Wheeljack's headlights tilted in a slight frown. "It's not really a second reason, really, just two parts of the same reason. First's to remove a bita temptation, make it harder for me to just blow everything up the way I used to; second's… " The green and white car sighed again, sinking on his wheels, "it's a reminder: there's more than one way of accomplishing the same goal and you've just got to work with what you have."

Bulkhead… Wheeljack… _Miko_… this newest incarnation of the Wreakers was far from elite Autobot material, but (like Wheeljack and his single grenade) he had to work with what he was given.

And perhaps part of working with new circumstance, he needed to find a new way to self-soothe, he thought as he signed another three citations for various Autobots (one of them _Prime_) and archived them. He'd be sure to do that.

Another signature.

Later.

.

.

fini

.


	4. The Devil's Storm

I've decided to blame this on my new Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull and Shackles box set. There is just no other explanation. Or maybe it was just time for me to create my own extremely silly AU…

Ship names courtesy of the Seventh Sanctum random generators

Prompt: tf_promptorama Combiners Any Continuity - Kidnapped!

Summary: Pirates!AU - Swindle wants to ransom the prisoner; Vortex… doesn't.

.

**The Devil's Storm**

.

.

Vortex cackled as he poked the captive in the cage. Blades snarled back, spinning his rotors in helpless frustration, which only made the other helicopter cackle more.

The maniacal laughter did not go unnoticed among the other crew members of the _Devil's Storm_. Swindle slammed open the door to the ship's lowest deck. "Will you quit that racket!" he snarled. "And leave the merchandise alone. It's not worth anything stressed."

Vortex fanned out his rotors, then folded them. "How many pieces of plating can I pry off before it counts as _stressed_?" He cackled again, almost drowning out Blade's angry whirring.

The Autobot Navy sailor threw himself against the rusty bars of the cage. "Captain Hot Spot won't let you get away with this!" He threw himself against the bars again and the cage shook, sloshing in the accumulated liquid the bottom of the bars rested in. "And when I get out, I'm going to rip out your support struts and beat you with them!"

Both the Decepticon pirates ignored him. "When we get closer to where the _Guardian Glaive_ docks, you can snap off a rotor or two as proof we have it, but until then you're not to go near the captive." Vortex started to protest, but Swindle just waved his finger in front of his fellow Combaticon's visor. "Captain Onslaught's orders."

Swindle pulled his finger away when Vortex tilted his head, tracking the digit's movement, lest it get bitten off. Again. The helo made a disappointed sound, then flicked his armor dismissively. "Fine. I'll leave it alone. But if they don't pay…"

"Then you can torture it to your heart's content," assured the hover car. "Now leave it alone." Swindle gave the brig a disgusted look and stomped out, shaking the filthy liquid off his pedes as he slammed the door.

Vortex gave Blades one last eager, almost lecherous, look. "We both know Hot Spot won't pay," he purred. "Then I'll be back," he tapped the rusty lock twice, then followed his teammate out of the brig, "We should at least put him on the oars with the others; get some use out of him!" he called up to Swindle, fingering the electrowhip he used to… _encourage_ the slaves to keep working.

"What part," Swindle called back, "of _valuable_ don't you underst—?" The door slammed one last time, leaving Blades in the dripping, rusty dark.

.

.

_Can't wait in the mornin' the day to end,_

_And the touch of the whip is your only friend,_

— Heather Alexander, _Yo Ho!_

.

.

End


	5. Rodeo and Juliet

Summary: TF:Prime Shattered Glass. Years later, Arcee comes looking.

Notes: Prompt is tf_promptorama's weekly challenge "Minibots, any continuity / Never Coming Back"

So um… I read the prompts and was thinking that I really needed to start doing this again before I inertia shut down my writing bug for another six months or more but the only thing I could think of to write was Cliffjumper and and the Shattered Glass story lines. Except I've never had the opportunity to read the actual Shattered Glass comics; all I know about that universe comes from wiki and fanfiction. I had all sorts of problems because of this, until I hit on this.

So imagine that this takes place in an alternate TF:Prime where instead of being killed and turned into a zombie, Cliffjumper is knocked into an interdimentional portal. IDK if TFP Cliffjumper is still considered a _minibot_ but bear with me, okay? Maybe if he isn't, Arcee is? 'Cause she's the smallest bot on that show?

Arcee/Cliffjumper, mention of Starscream/Megatron

.

**Rodeo and Juliet**

.

.

_Rodeo and Juliet_

_If there's ever been a greater love_

_Thoust hasn't found it yet_

_What's to be or not to be_

_Is anybody's bet_

_Rodeo and Juliet_

— Garth Brooks, _Rodeo and Juliet_

.

.

.

She was trapped in the tall glittering spires of Kaon. Enemy territory. The crystals glittered in the light of Cybertron's dying sun and in the fires of war-fueled industry. The edge of the tower fell in front of her, a fatal drop interspersed with painful, torturous spikes that promised to impale anyone foolish to believe that to be an escape.

Behind her was the Decepticon army, tense and waiting for her to violate her patrol. They didn't trust her, of course, but for the sake of their mutual ally they were willing to allow her to roam the halls as long as he escorted her. She wasn't foolish to believe that Cliffjumper was the only one here keeping an optic on her; he was just the only friendly face and voice to be found and the others, the ones that lurked out of sight and watched through cameras and microphone pickups and who knew what else were simply careful not to be seen.

The spoke english. Paranoid as she was, she didn't want the Decepticons listening in; Cliffjumper simply humored her.

"… and Starscream is Megatron's most loyal soldier?" Arcee's question practically dripped disbelief. In her experience "loyal" and "Starscream" were two words that didn't even exist in the same solar system of each other.

"Pretty sure he's got a crush," Cliffjumper said, probably just to see his partner twitch violently. "He painted these little gold glyphs on his wings, the way Towers mechs used to do when they were advertising that they wanted to court someone and is prancing around showing them off to everyone, and when Megatron's around he just, I don't know… _flutters_ them so they sparkle." Arcee's optics were huge and round with disbelief. She looked about ready to crash from the sheer impossibleness of what she was hearing. Cliffjumper grinned. He'd always said that if anyone needed to spend some stress-free time in lala land via logic crash it was his way too serious Arcee… not that he'd ever managed to crash her. "Everyone thinks it's a huge lark, laughing their tailpipes off. Apparently he's done it before, when Megs needed to laugh before he had a nervous breakdown or something, but… I think he means it this time."

For a moment it was all Arcee could do to just sit there and blink. The words refused to process then she shuddered. The mental images were just… horrifying. She turned her attention to the battlements of Darkmount and the rest of Kaon beyond. Her mind just kept trying to overlay the sparkling industrial city and its clearly defensive siege towers with the ruins she knew.

And imagined, far off in the distance, she could see the smoke rising from the depressing war-torn city she'd been told Iacon had become.

"Hey…" Cliffjumper leaned into her, bumping her gently. "You okay?"

"I suppose I owe Shockwave an apology."

The orange bot laughed. Arcee remembered the bright yellow Con she'd assaulted coming through the groundbridge portal. The color had barely made her hesitate. "Yeah… no. Shockwave's the forgiving sort," Arcee practically heard a relay in her processor go _fzzzt!_ even as Cliff kept talking, "and everyone's heard my stories about my old partner so when a blue and pink version of Arcee with a weird altmode comes bounding out of a really wonky ground bridge… Shockwave's first thought was to call me. He does't blame you."

That… that was just too much.

Fortunately Cliffjumper seemed to think so too. "So, enough about the weirdness that been my life for the last five years, How're you and the other bots getting on?"

"We won."

His vents hitched and he nearly fell over before catching himself. Good thing he did… it was a long way down off the Darkmount tower they currently were swinging their feet over the edge of. "What! Really?"

"Really," her voice was as dry as the Nevada sands.

"Wow." He coughed and his engine sputtered as he got his vents back under control. "You couldn't have mentioned that sooner."

She shrugged. "It hadn't seemed like the right time."

Cliffjumper looked out over the Kaon cityscape, a bit haunted himself, and Arcee knew the last five years hadn't all been gossiping about Starscream's antics and trading jokes with Shockwave. It hadn't slipped by her that all he'd said about this universe's Autobots had been _They ain't very nice people, Cee_ and had actively shied away from mentioning her alternate at all. "Yeah. I get that. Bit crass to brag about kickin' Con tailpipe here." And that sounded like the bitter voice of experience. He took a deep vent in, held it, then let it out. "I need to know, Cee."

He sounded haunted and so she cautiously began telling him about the last five years. Mourning for Cliffjumper, meeting Jack, fighting Decpticons, Unicron and losing Optimus, getting Prime back, tracking the artifacts, Smokescreen ("Impulsive? _Really?_" "Greener than grass rookie too." "Wow. Never woulda guessed." "What's his alternate like?" "Slagging _tactician_. Bot's never without a clever plan. It's creepy. If Pr—their leader wasn't always beating him and throwing him in the brig for trying to overthrow him, we'd have lost a dozen times over." "_Smokescreen!?_ We are talking about the same bot, right?" "Uh… No. We aren't. That's kinda the point."), Starscream betraying Megatron… then trading info with the Autobots… then trying to kill Megatron… then betraying the Autobots, scattering after the Nevada base fell, Ultra Magnus (this time she ignored Cliffjumper's shudder at the name; she didn't want to know), predacons, Predaking, Bumblebee killing Megatron, Unicron, Prime's final sacrifice.

He cocked his head, uncharacteristically quiet as he contemplated the news. She leaned against him, reveling in the warmth of his systems. She'd thought him lost, gone. When Ratchet had told her about the groundbridge records he'd found in the _Nemesis_' logs, told her there was a chance Cliffjumper might still be alive, she hadn't believed him. Then she'd refused to believe him. The thought that her partner, all this time, had been trapped in some dimensional pocket like the Shadowzone and she hadn't even _looked_ for him… it had nearly broken her.

Jack had talked her into taking the chance that Ratchet was right.

Of course, the last thing she'd expected coming out of the modified groundbridge portal was a yellow Shockwave, but… and the rest was history, as they said on Earth.

Her chono dinged, breaking them both out of their reveries. He looked at her.

"Ratchet said he'd give me twenty-four hours to find you, then he'd open another 'bridge for us to come home." She said it like they'd all believed that she'd find Cliffjumper alive and well and willing to come home. She didn't say that they'd all thought it most likely that she'd find only a starved, grey shell but that it would be better to _know_ for sure their comrade's fate than to be left in a logic loop of endless speculation.

He shifted uncomfortably, scratching the back of his head, the gesture so familiar it was almost painful. "About that…"

She should have guessed. "You're not coming home."

"I… It's not like you need my help kicking Con tailpipe anymore. I'm a warrior; I ain't one for putting things back together." And the Decepticons here still needed warriors. "And you! You've gotten yourself a new partner it sounds like. It'd just be awkward having me around as a fifth wheel." He touched her, scarred, gentle and familiar. "You'll be alright without me."

He'd never repaired his broken horn, was all she could think. She still had the tip. Both, she thought, served as reminders and mementos.

Reminder… but a broken one. Both of them had broken that day. They'd patched and welded their sparks back together, moved on, and fought their wars, but nothing was ever going to go back to what it once had been. They'd both mourned and moved on. She was the one digging at the past in the name of closure.

And — the thought made her shudder, but she didn't deny the truth of it — the Decepticons here needed him.

"Alright," she said. She wouldn't sob; she was not going to make it harder for him. He grinned at her, relieved she wasn't going to argue. "Since we still have an hour, and I'm not going to spend it running back to the bridge site with a hoard of scraplets on my tailpipe, you are going to tell me just what else is topsy-turvy in this whacky mirror'verse."

He laughed. "Well… funny you should mention scraplets…"

.

.

.

fin


	6. Dark Praxus: Cities in Dust

Fandoms: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers Generation One

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Characters: Soundwave, Teletraan, Orion Pax | Optimus Prime, Prowl, Jazz

Other Tags: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Headcannon, Worldbuilding

Summary: WFC Dark!Praxus AU. Even in war, there are moments when everything changes.

Notes: Prompt: tf_promptorama weekly challenge Soundwave / Everything will change

I dislike dealing with the destruction of Praxus. Hell I dislike even assuming that it happens in every single continuity. But every time I write a Prowl-centric 'verse I come back to it, and each time I do I swear that it's the _absolute_ last time I'll write a story dealing with the it. But then I start again with a new 'verse and a new version of Prowl and … well as you can see, a new version of the Fall of Praxus.

Obviously this takes place between What Happens in Praxus and the beginning of the WFC game. I know in fandom Starscream usually leads the Praxus assault, but a) Soundwave was the weekly prompt character that inspired this, and b) in the WFC timeline Starscream's still (somewhat) of an Autobot at this point. Well , either an Autobot or a prisoner on Trypticon Station depending on your point of view. Given the way the first mission in WFC progresses, I don't buy him already being a Decepticon when the game starts though. More fandom notes at the end because WFC "cannon" is kinda fragged up.

.

.

.

**Cities in Dust**

.

.

_Water was running, children were running_

_We found you hiding, we found you lying_

_Your city lies in dust, my friend_

_Ohh, oh, your city lies in dust, my friend_

— Siouxsie &amp; The Banshees, _"Cities in Dust"_

.

.

As Soundwave expected, Teletraan was the first person to respond to the attack.

All mechs could sense and respond to each others' electromagnetic fields. In that sense, all Cybertronians were empaths and to those senses the line between _person_ and _not-person_ was clearly drawn at the spark. Drones, AIs, and unsparked equipment had EM fields of course, but they fluctuated in precise accordance with energy usage. Off. On. Stand by. They were flat. Sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, there was no emotion, no will, no _spark_ behind those changes in magnetic resonance. Put a spark into play and all that changes; all of a sudden you're dealing with a complex, feeling _person_ whose EM field arced and shifted and flared with sometimes readable sometimes opaque layers of emotion.

To a _telepath_, with the ability to wirelessly uplink to the processors of anything _with_ processors, the distinction was much fuzzier.

Teletraan may not have a spark, but his programmers had instilled in him a tireless sense of duty to protect those Autobots' data networks he was responsible for and he used it with a _will_ that no telepath could mistake for simple programming akin to that of a scraplet.

That _will_ fell against Soundwave's wireless attack on Praxus' systems with all the force of an angry metrotitan.

NO, appeared on Soundwave's HUD as newly constructed firewalls _burned_ against his own processors. Nothing else, no dramatics, no threats or promises as a sparked mech might have offered. Just that flat, emotionless determination. By convention and law Teletraan wan't even a person, and that restriction became his door. He wasn't going to let something as insignificant to his programming directives as the Autobots' Council and Prime's commands to withdraw protection from the "Neutral" city stop him from trying to shred Soundwave's malicious code. And Soundwave's very thoughts, if his own firewalls fell to the AI's attacks. He released Laserbeak and she sped off with the message for the real attack to begin.

Decepticons moved in. The city was surrounded. Warp cannons that had crawled into place over the last decaorn unfolded and started bombarding the city. Glittering casino towers and the spires of the grand temples to Cybertron's false gods crumbled and precious crystal gardens shattered beneath the onslaught. Soundwave saw it all, _felt_ it all, though his connections to the city's systems as he fought Teletraan for control of the disintegrating networks.

Each time a part of Praxus died, Soundwave's spark flared dangerously in distress as he lived the destruction.

Each time a part of Praxus died, more and more of Teletraan's code corrupted as data that had been spread out over circuits and wires disappeared when the physical computers were destroyed.

Together they died, one piece at a time, alongside the city they fought over. Still they both grappled through the battlefield of Praxus' crumbling datanet.

A sparked hacker might have buffeted Soundwave with pain or horror or denial but every time he met the AI in the battle of code vs code, each time they collided after another explosion ripped them apart and left both their code bleeding data across the deteriorating net, all Soundwave felt was that same code-driven _will_. Teletraan literally didn't care that this battlefield was being lost in the realm of the physical where, without the city's access codes, he didn't even have the power to open a door much less fight. He didn't care that he couldn't keep the Praxans from dying. He didn't even care that the datanet he fought over was literally fragmenting around, through, in him. He had decided that Praxus was an Autobot city and he would not yield it to the enemy. His purpose was to protect Autobot datanets from Decepticon hackers; he would do it until the last byte of his code no longer existed.

Not even Soundwave could match that sort of will for long. Eventually the needs of frame and spark would cause his mind and intrusion code to falter.

Hence the warp cannons.

Soundwave wasn't trying to take the city, just to take what he could before there was nothing left to take.

Via split-second views through the millions of cameras and scanners of the casinos he could manage before Teletraan firewalled them, chasing each other, camera to camera each one offering only a tiny glimpse before his access was denied, he saw Praxans, glittering and bloated on the wealth their city stole from all of Cybertron, fall to the weapons of loyal Decepticons. Brutes waded through the streets, slaughtering as they went. Tanks bombarded the buildings that mattered: the small Peacekeepers' armory, the ineffectual government buildings, the mines.

It was beautiful, the destruction of a corrupt regime. Grinding the rust from an infected wound.

Until something changed.

"_Autobots! - Where'd they - Look out!"_

Soundwave and Teletraan shredded their way through the networks as he turned his attention to the cameras in the area from which the distress calls were coming. With a surge of _need_ he took control long enough to see the Autobots before he was forced to retreat from the cameras by the AI dogging his heels.

Orion Pax. He should have anticipated that that particular Autobot commander would disobey Zeta's orders in so as to defend the "innocents" of the city.

No matter. He sent Buzzsaw with orders to redirect on of the warp cannons to fire on the Autobots' position. Then he ruthlessly turned his attention back to the networks. By the end of the orn, Praxus would be nothing but a ruin and he needed to get _something_ from its soon-to-be-corpse.

Praxus was a city built on exploitation and greed. It's banks and casinos drained shanix from Cybertron like the parasites they were. When true war had broken, greedy to take advantage and stupidly certain that money could shield them from any fallout, Praxus had declared itself neutral. They would lend money to both sides and entertain mechs from all over Cybertron as it always had, and there would be no fighting anywhere near the city. In response the Autobots had withdrawn their military protection and Megatron had declared that he would have the city, that Praxus would _submit_, or it would be destroyed. Of course Praxus had its own defenders, but they were proving to be nothing against the might of the Decepticon armies.

Megatron kept his promises.

But there was still value in the city. All that shanix could turn the tide of the war, to say nothing of the fighting drones, the energon mines, and the Praxus Well of Sparks.

Through Laserbeak he issued orders for the Decepticons to concentrate on the Well and the mines. Let Orion save a few hundred — a few thousand even — of Praxus' citizens. Manipulators and bargainers, rule makers, lawbreakers and gamblers, they were weak and lazy. They were worthless and the refugees would only drain the Autobots' resources fasters.

And Autobots or no Autobots, the warp cannons would leave only scrap metal and slag.

With Teletraan proving as formidable as he was, there was no way Soundwave was getting into Praxus' banks so he turned his attention to the drones.

Teletraan fought him every step of the way, but he finally started breaking open the passwords he needed. Leapers and snipers and tank-drones and other more exotic creatures built for this city's versions of the gladiator Pits responded to his will by the hundreds.

NO!Sounwave couldn't help but flinch as another will joined Teletraan's defense of the frayed data networks. A sparked will, he thought, as he was buffeted by _refusal-mine!-SUBMIT!_ so strong he almost knelt as he did in the presence of Lord Megatron. The EM field of the entire city surged with it and some of the Decepticons faltered under its weight. PRAXUS IS MINE!

Not anymore. If it ever was. This was not the _will_ of one of those weak corporate overlords that ruled the city; this was the _will_ of the sort of warrior that Praxus had never valued. A fine Decepticon, if he weren't so obviously already an enemy. He clenched his hands and went back to his task. "Decepticons will continue attack," he commanded and Laserbeak carried his orders to the physical battlefield.

The drones continued to fall to his will, but, to his horror, this newcomer to the digital battleground had at least some of the passwords he lacked. He wasn't as good a hacker as Soundwave or as good a programmer as Teletraan, but _passwords_. Spydrones disconnected from their parent systems and vanished from Soundwave's senses. Fighting drones were snatched from him before he could hack them and racing drones sped away in every direction. Mining equipment tagged Decepticon warriors as rich deposits and shredded them. Casino doors opened and closed, herding civilians toward the protection of Orion Pax and the other Autobots and trapped Decepticons as the warp cannons obliterated the buildings they were in.

Teletraan continued to throw viruses at Soundwave and construct firewalls against his intrusive code; this new combatant — _mine-submit!-KNEEL TO ME! — _ _took_ Praxus from him and it was all he could do to continue snatching drones without allowing the AI to breach his own firewalls. It wasn't enough to save the city. Between the three of them, everything Praxus was or ever could have been was torn apart and Soundwave gave his final command to the Decepticon forces.

A breem later the energon mines exploded.

Great plumes of blue fire mushroomed into the sky and the shockwaves tore outwards from the epicenters, leveling everything in their paths. The towers, the hotels, the casinos, _Praxus_ fell.

All hail Lord Megatron.

.

.

A decaorn later, Blaster City disappeared beneath the fiery tides of war. No attack. No warning. The great Decepticon munitions plants were catastrophically sabotaged, exploding with enough force to crush the surface plates of Cybertron itself beneath the city. Everyone, it was said afterwards, felt the tremor, from Kaon to Iacon.

It was a heavy blow to the Decepticon Cause. Lord Megatron was furious.

And Soundwave received a message. A simple, unsigned line of text that nevertheless dripped with familiar _fury-mine-submit!_ to his telepathic senses:

YOU TAKE MINE; I TAKE YOURS.

.

.

End

.

.

.

Fandom/Story Notes: So… there are so many story inconsistencies between WFC/FoC, Rise of the Dark Spark, Transformers:Prime/Predacons Rising, the _Transformers: Exodus_ novel and the Michael Bay Movies that I generally consider them to all exist in their own continuity bubbles despite them all being officially connected to the others in some way. (I haven't seen RiD2015 yet so I haven't formed a real opinion on it yet but since its supposed to be a sequel to Prime, but Optimus is alive… probably a separate continuity bubble in my personal headcannon.) Simply put, all of them are just a giant continuity mess.

As such, I'm not only slapping an AU tag on this entire 'verse just to be safe, but am also clarifying what designs I'm using for Jazz and Prowl, who are the main characters of this 'verse (Soundwave here notwithstanding). Other characters (including Soundwave) use the WFC/FoC designs. For any ffn readers, I've put the links on my profile.


	7. Not My First Rodeo

Fandoms: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers Generation One

Relationships: Jazz/Prowl

Characters: Jazz, Prowl

Other Tags: Alternate Universe, Cannon-Typical Violence, Sabotage,

Summary: tf_promptorama weekly promp Jazz / Hovering. Jazz is a superspy; to be fair, so is Prowl, but he emphatically does not want the slagging tactician's help right now.

.

.

.

**Not My First Rodeo**

.

.

"Look," Jazz growled over his comlink, "it's not that I don't appreciate that you're looking out for me, but really… this isn't my first rodeo."

Prowl did not acknowledge the comment. "According to the blueprints, personal quarters are coming up on your left."

"I _know_," Jazz hissed.

"Don't forget the traps."

Jazz just muttered angrily. He knew about the traps. Shockwave always had traps. They were never on the blueprints he filed with Megatron in Kaon so getting around the traps was kinda an improv sort of thing, but they were always there and Jazz _so_ did not need _Prowl_ to remind him about them.

Fortunately for Jazz's health and sanity, he didn't need to actually get around them this time; he just released the little spy drones he'd brought and the tiny little things would make their way into the assistant's quarters and hopefully get packed up with the other personal effects when this base was evacuated. How did Jazz know this base was going to be evacuated?

All part of the plan.

The plan Jazz knew. The plan Jazz really needed Prowl to _shut up about_.

"The detpacks should go—"

"I know where the fragging detpacks need to go. You gonna try telling me how to arm them too?" No verbal response from Prowl, but the blueprints for the explosives suddenly shoved themselves into Jazz's communications suite like a dose of bad energon, along with step-by-step instructions for safe handling and arming the things. Jazz was extremely pleased with himself that he didn't snarl as he replied. "You realize I built these things, don't you?"

"Of course."

Jazz let off a string of expletives that would have made a dockworker blush — and had, on at least one occasion in the past. Prime was so easy to embarrass sometimes.

Honestly he didn't know how Prowl had the processing power to try and micromanage Jazz's mission, given he was busy doing the same for the attack on the energon convoy ten klicks away that had emptied this base of its guards so Jazz could do his thing. But since he did, Jazz did know it was just reflex on Prowl's part to do so; Jazz, like many of the combatants, was feeding the tactician his sensor data, so it was just automatic to Prowl to give him instructions like he was the rest of the Autobots. Jazz understood.

Understanding, he thought to himself, still muttering angry-oh-so-angry things about the tactician in the safety of his processor as he set the detpacks on the base's primary structural supports, did not make it any less annoying.

Before the next time Jazz was sent out on a mission while feeding Prowl the data in real-time, he was going to insist that Prowl install some sort of processor-filter so he could just _shut the frag up_ and leave Jazz's part of the mission the _Pit_ alone. This? This was a _vow_. This was a vow Jazz was making right the _frag_ now and if Prowl put up a fuss about it, so help him Primus, second in command or no second in command he was going make Prowl sleep in the Primus-damned _rec room_.

He finished setting the last detpack and stood, idly brushing the oxide dust that swirled through this base off his hands.

"Now—"

"Primus-damnit Prowl!" That was _it_. The last, the absolute _last_ of Jazz's frayed patience "I know the slagging PLAN. Will you just SHUTH THE PIT UP AND LET ME DO MY JOB?"

The base rang in the silence following Jazz's outburst, like the last few seconds before an acid storm hit. Of course his words hadn't been out loud — no amount of frustration would make Jazz that careless — but that didn't change the sense of foreboding.

And then the storm broke, the first burning raindrop falling, in the unmistakeable sound of a heavy footstep.

Optic band lowered from where he'd been glaring in the direction of the tactician's little cloaked hidey-hole a hundred klicks away, he met the single-opticked gaze of the patrol form of one of Shockwave's Guardian drones. And there Jazz was, right in the thing's laser-sight without a scrap of cover to dive into. Wonderful. This mission just couldn't get any better could it?

Of course Prowl saw it too, though his sensor link with the saboteur. "I _was_ going to say that now you need to avoid the Decepticon patrols as you escape, but fighting your way out should be effective as well."

And Jazz saw red. Literally. His optic-band flashed red as his temper fully took over his cognitive functions. With a snarl he overlayed Prowl's image over the guardian's form as it shifted to battle-mode and lunged.

He had the wonderfully visceral pleasure of blowing the imagined-fragger's head off a dozen times, as a moment later the base's alarms went off and he was mobbed by guardian drones. He hoped Prowl was watching that modified sensor feed. Closely.

.

.

.

End

.

.

Me: Now Jazz… I appreciate the help with the weekly response thingy. I really do. But could we *please* start actually writing the main story of the dark Praxus thing, instead of just the hints in last week's prompt response?

Jazz: **looks up from where he's snogging Prowl on my desk** Maybe… I'll think about it. Later.

Me: O.O —.— O.O

Me: **Glares**

Jazz: **Laughs and takes off running**

Me: When I catch you I'm going to start shipping you with SCORPONOK! **chases after the pain in the aft.**

Prowl: **shrugs and posts the fic they just finished writing**


	8. I'll Wait (Until It's Okay Again)

Title: I'll Wait (Until It's Okay Again)

Summary: tf_rare_pairing weekly request: G1. Red Alert/Prowl - Steady and strong

.

.

Blue optics gazed unperturbed at the blaster leveled at the center of his chevron. The barrel trembled slightly, the wielder shaky. It wavered with the bot's indecision. Down towards the spark to preserve the precious battle computer that was so vital to the Autobots' continued survival, away when logic momentarily tore the paranoid thought-threads away from the idea of shooting him at all, then back up to the center of his head to the comparatively thin cranial armor that would disable the threat before he could so much as twitch.

Prowl did not twitch. Right now the gun's movement may be a sign of the conflict between Red Alert's logical programing, his loyalty algorithms, and his paranoia glitch. Another bot may have been tempted to try and influence the outcome, but he knew that any attempt at doing so would only tip the precarious balance in favor of Red's paranoia. And then his aim would no longer waver indecisively, but be as true as it was while he controlled the perimeter defenses.

It was a long moment of waiting

Finally loyalty and logic won out. "Primus!" the red and white Autobot hissed, flinging the gun away from himself. "Oh, Primus…what?"

Now Prowl moved, touching first Red's hand gently then pulling the trembling pile of almost-trauma to himself in an embrace when that first touch didn't cause a flinch. "Shhh… that's why I come. You know this."

"I could have…"

"You didn't," his voice was decisive, ending the conversation. He didn't. That was all that mattered. That was all that was said. He didn't.

_But he will_, went unsaid by either of them.


	9. No Really ALL the Buttons

Title: No. Really. ALL the Buttons.

Summary: tf_rare_pairing weekly request: G1. Soundwave/Shockwave - Press any button

.

.

Soundwave was loyal. Megatron was his leader, his _liege_ and he would not abide a disloyal thought. Bad enough he was forced to abide the presence and commands of the ever-treacherous Starscream; he certainly would not allow any critical thoughts within his _own_ mind.

Which was why he was _very carefully_ not examining the actual specs of the newest weapon Shockwave had built. Because if he did, he'd have acknowledge that the actual blueprints did not include the words "press any of the buttons to shoot".

Or perhaps they would.

Of course if they did, then that was a discrepency between those blueprints and the ones Shockwave had initially turned in to Megatron before construction had begun. If true, then Shockwave was demonstrating his mistrust — Not Thinking About That.

"Weapon: Meets all requirements. I will deliver it to Lord Megatron."

Without a face, Shockwave could not smile, but Soundwave felt it against his mind anyway. "I live to serve."

Now if only they could find a way to make their super weapons both impervious to Megatron's grandstanding _and_ Autobot sabotage…


	10. Cassandra

Summary: I…honestly have no idea where this came from. Same TFPrime Shattered Glass AU as _Rodeo and Juliet. _The Autobot second in command goes to the depths of Cybertron to consult an oracle about an interesting…problem regarding a newly recruited Decepticon

tf_rare_pairing prompt: Any continuity - Ultra Magnus/Prowl - Illusion of Control

Warnings: Shattered Glass Autobot nastiness… noncon, plug'n'play, torture, mindgames,

.

.

**Cassandra**

.

.

_You can't erase the poet's fate_

_Not even if you try…_

—Crüxshadows, _"Cassandra"_

.

.

This place was his secret. It was one of the keys to his power amongst the Autobots. All, save Prime, feared his rages, but rage was not enough to gain rank and power. While rage alone could gain one the Prime's favor, it could not attract his regard. Ambition, too, was a virtue… but one that could carry a mech only so far, as Smokescreen's frequent beatings, demotions and punishments could attest. Here was his edge, this secret treasure that he had found in the aftermath of a city's cleansing and hidden away far from the light of optics and stars, that had elevated him to the first among Prime's followers.

Footsteps descended the carefully cut stairs into the absolute bowls of Iacon. There were no lifts, no stable ramps that went this deep. Only this tiny sliver of a passage, almost too narrow for the Autobot who now traversed it. The stairs wound back and forth, slick with dirty oil and cloudy acid that dripped from the world above. This far beneath the surface, it did not actually rain, but that made Cybertron's predictably bad weather into a treacherous game of predicting the next flash flood that would come tearing through like a stampede of vicious zap ponies. And where, at the surface, once the acid had drained from the streets and towers it left them polished or oxidized but acid-free, down here, it _dripped_. It _oozed_ over the surface of the crystal encrusted walls, pooling into a thick, acidic sludge that _crawled_ over the flat spaces of the cliffs and canyons like some organic _thing_, biting the metal of any who dared traverse the depths.

Light was scarce. His own optics provided most of the illumination, dull red flickering and refracting back to him like a dying fire. Every so often, however, there would be the bright, clear lights of buildings long abandoned and paved over, their electrical systems still intact enough to create an audible buzz an the occasional firework of ancient lighting as he passed. In the distance there were other lights, steady blue and green and red streaks of bacteria and fungi metabolizing the used oil-sludge, acid, and metal of a Cybertron free of the fastidious decontamination procedures enforced by the mechs above.

Potentially, there was energon here, but it was unlikely. The crystals did not like being exposed to the acid from above, though paradoxically they grew on the edges of pools of it. Proper energon mines formed around ancient pools of acid that were completely encased by the metal around them, safe and protected from the weather of above. This place bore the scars, Ultra Magnus could see, of crystals that had rooted and grown on the edge of a sludgy puddle to the size of a scraplet between storms and exploded during the next fresh influx of drips.

He reached the bottom of the stairs, a vast valley of rubble. There were layers beneath this, the rubbled wedged into crushed support beams that yawed over the chasm connecting haphazard platforms of metal. It shifted dangerously. Ultra Magnus did not know how far one could travel down. All the way to the core of the planet, some said, though the scientific authorities of the Autobots all said that gravity _must_ at some point crush the metals of the planet into a single, solid, intraversable mass and that that same gravity would crush a traveller to his base metals long before he reached that point. He was inclined to believe the scientists, most of the time, but here in the heart of this wild cathedral his ember insisted on hammering belief in those fae tales against his processor. He would have offered a prayer, but there was no gods to pray _to_ and so he simply let out an involuntarily reverent sigh.

It echoed over the steady staccato of the dripping acid and the distant vibrations of rubble shifting, settling or falling. A single note hymn, small and insignificant against oppressive silence of wild subterranean Cybertron.

"Does this place frighten you?"

Instantly, targeting software had the intruder sighted. The dull grey mech blended seamlessly into the metallic rubble, visible now only because sharp doorwings had risen to catch the red firelight of Magnus' optics. Fearlessly the mech's gold optics flickered on, taking a moment, as though the wires had to be warmed they were so little used. He recognized the mech. This was no desperately neutral underworld dweller, but the very creature he had come to this misbegotten place to consult. He lowered his cannon.

"Of course not," he hissed back. Still, the depleted Forge of Solus Prime was a comforting weight against his back. To cover his unease he pulled the energon cube he'd brought with him out of his subspace. The mech's golden optics locked onto the fuel with a desperate, hungry look. He did not know how the mech survived the intervals between his visits, but he always came for Magnus' offering. "Come. Kneel," he commanded.

Optics locked onto the rich blue glow of the cube, the mech did so, crawling like an animal and occasionally leaping from one large piece of rubble to another, doorwings spread like those of a stunted seeker's. He came close enough that Magnus could see the indulgent amusement painted over the mech's face around those hungry optics, before he lowered himself to kneel at his feet, doorwings spread enticingly. Magnus allowed himself the pleasure of touching the vulnerable appendages, making the mech tremble. With the gold light of his optics spilling across the floor at Magnus' feet, he could not tell if the delicate shivering was from fear or desire, but whichever it was hardly mattered to Magnus. The cube in his hand was what brought this deep dweller to him; whatever he felt now, quivering under the larger Autobot's hand was what made him _obey_.

Like a cybercat seeking affection, the mech rubbed his dull red chevron against Magnus' leg, the sharp metal leaving hairline-think scratches in dark orange paint.

"What brings you to the basilica of the lost, the forgotten, the consigned to oblivion?" Ultra Magnus always expected the mech's voice to be scratchy and filled with the static of disuse, but instead it was steady and almost musical. It would be pleasant, except that the mech was given to nonsensical ravings that made Magnus' plating stand on edge. "Did you come to dance in the sound of silence, scream in prayer to the unknown depths? The Core of the Planet is angry, Her lifeblood lashes against the furthest shores, stealing diamonds from the inverted skies… you should go and appease Her with the dying gasp of the enemy stars…"

He cuffed the mech to silence. It was not this mech's _words_ he came for and so he did not answer. Sometimes they were useful, but more often they were nothing. Instead he placed the cube down on the rubble at his feet and watched the mech hungrily lap at the fuel. He left the mech there. He would have paced, save that the rubble shifted ominously under his bulk and so he simply stood to the side, running his optics over a piece of graffiti, long ago etched into the metal when it was new, and even a thousand vorns of acid had failed to erase its meaning. Yet Magnus was, as he always was when he returned to this place, blind to whatever eloquence it possessed. What a thousand vorns of acid had failed to accomplish, a thousand vorns of lingual drift had. The glyphs were unintelligible, refusing to give up so much as a byte of their secrets no matter how long he stared.

"It's a prayer," Magnus whirled, again targeting the mech who had crept up silently behind him, "to the Devourer From The Stars for 'victory over His foes, such that He may tear their wings from the skies, cast that cursed cannon to the Earth and grind all who oppose Him beneath his tires'."

With a snarl of the rage for which he was so well known on the surface, Magnus drew the Forge and struck. Those had been the words of Prime's most recent tirade, while Magnus himself was subjected to both the words and fists of his Prime. He would not mocked. Not by anyone, and especially by this half-mad feral creature. He struck again, sending the mech careening across the scraps of metal. Oxide dust filled the air in his wake and the mech's mad laughter soon followed.

The laughter brought Magnus back to himself. Without this mech, madness and all, he would be simply another body to be thrown upon the front lines, cannon fodder destined to expend his rage against the Decepticons until his ember burned out. This feral creature had given him the means to climb the ranks, the leverage with which he held his position. He could not afford to lose that in a fit of rage; he was not that short sighted.

The mech cackled again as the dust settled. "The itsy bitsy scraplet…poison in its gullet to bring down this, the most powerful of Primes, towers and temples falling in his wake…"

He lay there, dull silver against the duller blacks and greys of the rubble, gold optics off. He didn't twitch as Magnus stomped closer, ignoring the way the rubble groaned in warning. Sparks arced from beneath crushed plating, but the mech gave no sign of pain.

"… it's a fae tale Magnus. Dungeons and dragons and heroes with flaming swords healed by heather bindings and laying with the Witch, warded against all harm." With a snarl, Magnus settled, straddling the mech's chest. He needed this mech to _shut up_ or he would not be able to help but to tear the mad, babbling thing asunder in his fury. "Which are you, Magnus? Dragon, or hero, or just one of the hundreds of random obstacles, no more than a speed bump for the Chosen?" Snarling again he ripped the cover from the mech's interface jack behind his head and slammed his own cord home.

A scream filled the cavern. It started soft as a scraplet's footstep and built to a crescendo that echoed off the walls, made the dust still hanging in the air tremble, threatened to vibrate the rubble from beneath them both. It filled Magnus' audios, his mind, his _world_. It was a storm of sound that he could do nothing but weather, as he had so many times before.

At least the creature wasn't _talking_ any longer.

Golden optics spilled light from the creature's body through his optics as it arched and writhed beneath him, something between pain and pleasure, not quite trying to escape but neither was he trying to entice his captor to touch. Still the scream built and Magnus closed the shutters over his optics, trying to protect the delicate glass from the piercing, painful note.

Finally that note faded, the creature's body stilled, optics dimming to a dull, sullen yellow and Magnus turned his attention to getting what he'd come here for.

_The Path to the Core is 7.49 degrees to the polar south, a 4.9972 degree decline for the first 9.2223 mechanomiles … lava sparks and magnetism… Magnus will/has come and he will follow the Herald to the doom of all Cybertron… All this has happened, happened, happened…_

The mech had no firewalls. Magnus fell directly into his mad thoughts. They circled like cyberwolves, clawing at his own mind, trying to draw him into the dark madness that clung to the mech like used oil. With a force of will Magnus swept away the nonsensical ramblings — the mech gave a slight whimper of pain — and pushed deeper into his processor.

Here data ticked away with the precision Magnus sought. tick. tick. tick.

Data, pure and unfiltered by thought clicked around him. He knew the exact pressure he was exerting on the mech's chest, the dual forces of pressure and gravity beneath them, the exact different in their processing power. Magnus' mind was so much slower than his captive's. Here, in this unconscious data analysis, he found every method by which the mech could escape his hold, as well as the decision not to. That decision had no reason, made as it had been by the swirling chaos of the conscious mind that Magnus would not analyze, but faced with a computer that knew his every weakness and how to exploit it, he could not deny that this mech chose to submit to him, was not held down by Magnus' weight.

It was a realization as unwelcome as it was unavoidable, as it always was. With a snarl he continued with his purpose here.

Every scrap of data he had observed, that had been reported to him, he shoved into this computer. This new Decepticon, this brightly colored clone of their fallen comrade Cliffjumper had to be dealt with. The data was placidly accepted. _Upload complete,_ the mech's thought was for a moment so overpowering that he was drawn into the mech's thoughts again, _I have become the vessel of the data which heralds the end of days…_ before wrenching himself back down into the advanced tactical analysis computer that made this mech so valuable to him.

The computer hummed with its new data and it wasn't long before plans started unfolding like the gossamer webs of circuit spiders in the connection between them. They spiraled out, branching, branching, branching until they met their unavoidable ends. This was what he'd come for. He ripped the plans from the mech's unconscious mind before doing the same to the interface cord that connected him.

He came to himself to the sound of the mech's giggling.

Magnus snarled in disgust and lifted himself off the ground and its filth. He had what he needed and he stalked away. He ignored the words that followed him — "Circles and cycles… this story has been told and no number of plans will change the steps of the Hero's Journey…" — and left Prowl in the darkness of Cybertron's underworld.

.

.

End

.

.

… anyone got a scrub brush and some brain bleach I can borrow…?


	11. A Fair Request

Summary: He turned from the wreckage of their shuttle to face his companion and shrugged. "It was a good idea at them time."

Drift desparately wanted to reach out and strangle the air, imagining it was Rodimus' neck, but didn't. He wasn't sure he could stop himself from *actually* reaching for the mech's cables if he did so. But he really, really wanted to.

Prompt: tf_rare_pairing weekly response: Drift/Rodimus - It was a good idea at the time. Short ficlet.

.

.

**A Fair Request**

.

.

Drift had given up on meditating. Instead he searched the ground at his feet for a small stone and, after examining it's dimensions to assure himself of its perfection, he tossed it gently into the lake. The ripples started violent then smoothed to the lake's former, perfect glassiness. In lieu of actual meditation he imagined that his irritation was the ripples and that it too would smooth itself away to the calmness he desired.

It wasn't working very well.

Beside him Rodimus scoffed. "You know that's not how you're supposed to do that."

And that would be why.

"Ignoring you," the swordsmech said as he began searching the ground for a new perfect rock.

"No. I'm serious. You're supposed to do it like this." And Rodimus demonstrated, skipping a rock an impressive six times across the surface of the lake, sending ripples out in every direction that sloshed and combined into discordant waves much like the mech himself. Drift only scowled and waited for the lake to smooth out again before tossing his rock succinctly in without skipping.

Rodimus sighed dramatically. "Look. I'm sorry. Is that what you want me to say. I'm sorry and I won't let it happen again."

"You're always sorry," Drift did not snarl. Did not let himself snarl. He imagined his irritation smoothing out like the ripples. "And I'm ignoring you."

"You're not. Ignoring me. I'm impossible to ignore," unfortunately true, especially when the captain was suggesting some dubious course of action that he somehow made _sound_ like it was a good idea when really, Drift knew better, but that didn't stop him from going along with his friend's plans anyway. "And you wouldn't have answered me if you were ignoring me."

This was also true. And because he had to acknowledge that answering did mean he was acknowledging his Captain's existence, this time he remained completely silent as he searched out another rock. It was getting harder to find ones that met his criteria for size, roundness and composition, most of them on this stretch of beach having already ended up in the lake, courtesy of Drift's oddly calm tantrum.

"Look. Ultra Magnus'll be here in a joor or so and then we'll be back on the ship and everything'll be just fine. What do you want from me?"

Right now he just wanted Rodimus to _shut up_ so that he could get a handle on his temper so that he didn't _ki—do _**_something_** he'd regret later. It was too much to ask that Rodimus stop doing this. Rodimus was Rodimus was Rodimus and if he ever really stopped pulling this stupid slag then he wouldn't be the mech whom had dared befriend a former killer. Drift would not ask it of him. Besides, it wouldn't be fair when Drift pulled slag that was just as stupid and Rodimus stood by him every time. He just needed, "Twenty minutes."

"What?" Drift couldn't see the other's optics, but he imagined that they were comically wide, trying to process the seeming non-sequitur.

"That's what I want," he clarified. With effort he managed to keep his voice as calm as he wanted to be, rather than allowing the irritation, _anger_, bleed into it. He wasn't that person anymore and he just needed some time to meditate and get a handle on this reactions again. "From you. Right now. Just. Go… do something else — something that isn't here, with me — for twenty minutes. Earth time. After that we can race or something."

He didn't see Rodimus blink, having bent over to pick up and examine another rock, but he could imagine it perfectly well. "Okay," he eventually said. "I'll… go see if there's anything worth salvaging from the shuttle or something. Twenty minutes!" He gave a jaunty wave as he left, heading back towards the plume of smoke that marked where they'd landed a short distance away.

_Perfect_, Drift thought as his companion wandered off. He tossed the rock into the lake, and this time the gentle _plop!_ was the only sound that disturbed the silence.

.

.

End

Note: Still restricted to what's at the library for IDW access, so I've only just started MTMTE. Hope this wasn't too bad despite that.


	12. Hide and Seek

Summary: After a mission gone wrong, they both just want to hide and Jazz thinks hiding out together is better than hiding alone.

For the prowlxjazz livejournal community anniversary challenge:

Our oreos need to recharge like all other Cybertronians. Now in this world, recharging involves plugging yourself into the main computer system for proper defragmentation. While your processor gets recharged, your consciousness is put into a virtual reality world created by the main computer system. (Think holodeck on Startrek, except instead of walking into a room they're plugging themselves in directly). Cybertronians can interact with others plugged into the system or choose not to interact with any other recharging mech/femme by changing the settings prior to entering recharge (important if a mech/mechs want privacy). This system is controlled by artificial intelligence and reacts according to each mech's needs/wishes/desires.

In this VR world, Cybertronians can use their holo avatars to become anything/anyone they want. Animal, human, organic, go wild, be creative!

.

.

**Hide And Seek**

.

.

.

It had been a rough few days.

It should have been a simple prisoner exchange after a battle. Trading Ironhide and Warpath for Laserbeak should have been a no brainer, 'cept the 'Cons would only trade one for one, and wouldn't consider otherwise, not even after Jazz'd called up Soundwave personally and talked. Interrogator to worried cassette-carrier.

Well Jazz couldn't let Sounders call his bluff like that without responding. Bad enough Megatron sneered and called them all soft-sparked morons for insisting they get both their bots back, or because they didn't routinely torture captured cannon fodder, or whatever reason Megs could think of. Jazz could not, just could not, have Soundwave doubting his word like that, else no threat he ever made would carry any power again.

He said as much. "Can't have you doubting me, 'Wave. Now that you've called m'bluff, I don't 'zactly have a choice do I?"

"Negative," Soundwave agreed, digitized monotone flatter than usual with resignation. "Direct orders from Megatron do not allow for private negotiation. Consequences: understood."

Jazz could almost respect him for not attempting to negotiate a set of terms he couldn't follow through on or trying to deceive him. He still left the comm line open so Soundwave could listen to the little birdie-bot shriek.

Neither begged for him to stop. He wouldn't — couldn't — have, and that they both knew it well enough not to even ask, well that just made him feel worse.

And since Megatron wasn't willing to trade Ironhide back, that meant a rescue — one that had to be planned and underway by the time the trade was scheduled in a couple of days. If there was a bright side to this it was that Ironhide could at least keep his trap shut during a stealthful getaway.

Mission planned, decoys set, the mission had still gone to the Pit. What should have been a simple prisoner exchange and simultaneous quick jaunt onto the Nemesis to pick up Ironhide had turned into two concurrent battles that had left most of them injured in some way and Ironhide in forced stasis.

After the fracas, almost everyone expected him to either attend the during-defrag victory party, or to engage privacy mode so he could brood in the peace of his own VR world. Jazz did neither.

From his perch on the roof of Twilight Sparkle's library, he watched his fellow Autobots party down in Ponyville's town square. Animals were popular skins for 'bots right now. It was easy to see who had picked out tonight's VR location. There was Blaster, decked out like a male Pinkie Pie from the curls of his bright pink mane to the balloons of his adorable cutie mark and complete with the Party Cannon he was still indiscriminately blasting everywhere though the town was already covered in confetti. Several others had come as ponies, but not everyone. Ironhide (good to see that Ratchet felt confident enough to pull him out of stasis and put him into a proper recharge) was a Clydesdale draft horse — no candy-colored ponies for him. Optimus was familiar in the form of his favorite yellow labrador - great dane mutt. The Protectobots, minus First Aid, were also dogs, but cartoonish ones more fitting with the ponies around them and wearing specially-fitted rescue uniforms Jazz vaguely recognized from a cartoon they liked right now.

Grimlock was a robot t-rex, albeit one appropriately sized to attend the party. Good luck getting him to take on another form during defrag. It usually took a special event and a direct order from Prime to get him to go as far as human. Jazz could respect the strength of identity that took, but it wasn't exactly healthy for a transformer.

Usually Jazz'd be right down there, all dressed up as Vinyl Scratch (original female flavor; Jazz didn't hold to generbending the cannon ponies) and mixing up some sweet tunes for everyone to dance the night away to. It was fun, and watching Ratchet throw a fit — the same fit he threw every time the shared VR was Ponyville — was the highlight of the night. But the medic hadn't arrived and probably wouldn't tonight. When Jazz himself had been kicked out of medbay with strict instructions to recharge and defrag, Ironhide had still been in critical condition.

Instead he flew away from the lights and the music and the cheers of victory on the silent wings of a black and white tiger owl. So silent that sharp-eared Steeljaw (pretending to be a grey three-tailed fox for the night) never heard him. The owl was one of his favorites, though most of his fellow Autobots didn't know to look for him wearing this form. There was just something about its perfect dedication to stealth and the way it saw the VR world — excellent eyesight, but hearing was in another category altogether, so crisp and clear that anything louder than a mouse's heartbeat was almost painful — that made it a good fit for Jazz the Spec Ops agent, but not for Jazz the Partier. There was someone else avoiding the party Jazz doubted had engaged privacy mode, who was maybe lurking in a form no one would think to associate with him.

The Everfree Forest around Ponyville was still creepy as the Pit, but a safe place to party was the order of the night, so it was free of the timber wolves and diamond dogs and poison joke flowers that made it dangerous to ponykind on more adventurous nights. Things rustled in the underbrush or called to each other just beyond sight. Just enough to give a bot a thrill but never coming close enough to go from I-dare-you-to-spend-a-night-in-the-haunted-mansion levels of creepy to outright fright.

When he got there, landing on the window sill and nudging the glass open with his beak, Zecora's cottage was empty. The cartoon physics of the VR world meant it was impossible to tell if Zecora had been here or not. A fire was always cheerily burning in the hearth. A potion of some sort always bubbled merrily away, filling the house with fragrant smoke. But Jazz had his ways. He perched on the table and turned the page of the potion book, half expecting neat columns of Cybertronian glyphs; Prowl never could let the mission reports go until morning.

Nothing. Just a vaguely arcane diagram and some squiggly lines to represent text. Okay, so Prowl wasn't skinned as Ponyville's resident outcast tonight, which meant he really didn't want to go to the party. If he'd been Zecora, he'd've been just waiting for someone to think to invite him. But that was okay; Jazz didn't feel like partying either.

Ten minutes later, he was perched on the chimney peering out into the scary woods thoughtfully.

Alright. He preened his wing a bit as he tried to think this through logically, smoothing out feathers in a self-soothing mannerism Jazz was quite frankly amazed even worked. It's not like his native form had any feathers, but the sensation of bringing all the pinions into precise zipper-locked place was strangely calming. Every time he did this, it occurred to him that this must be what Prowl felt when he compulsively straitened his desk. If I were an antisocial tactician, where (and what) would I be?

Anyone else would have long before now concluded Prowl had engaged privacy mode for the night. Truth was Prowl almost never defragged in privacy mode. He just knew all the best ways to hide, but staying in the public realm was a sure clue that he wasn't averse to being found.

The VR realm was as large as it needed to be to contain everyone connected to the defrag computer. Once, on Cybertron, under the weight of thousands of bots' expectations, each mind trying to correct what he saw as "wrong" with the VR world, the realms had defaulted to a reflection of Cybertron. The supposed "mechanical shapeshifters" had mostly stuck to trying out different frame types or new alt modes. No imagination at all. Now. Now with Earth's humans and its fauna and their TV and games and … just everything available to catch a bot's imagination, the VR realms had exploded with variety. On Cybertron, if he'd wanted to find someone he suspected was hiding in a public realm, he'd immediately start checking the vents for minicons or cleaning drones; Earth was trickier. It would help that Prowl had the sort of imagination that would try and correct what he saw as "wrong" with the area immediately around himself if he wasn't participating in the cartoon fantasy. He probably didn't even realize he affected the realm like that or he'd never allow it.

He flew up to the top of the tallest tree he could find. Most of the horizons were cartoon pine trees all the way to the painted backdrop, but one direction looked a bit more…naturalistic. He took off in that direction.

This far from the party, and moving away from the cartoon dangers of the Everfree, the forest was quiet. To an owl's hearing it could never be silent, but the real-world critters Prowl's processor had conjured knew death flew among the branches on silent feathers and acted accordingly. Jazz did his best to pay attention to each one. The mice and voles, the crickets and frogs, the moths, the fireflies…any could be Prowl.

But the VR realm had its tells. The forest was programmed to be safe tonight. No predators that would bother a mech's chosen form should be present. Spotting a frog staking out his territory on a log meant he wasn't looking for an insect. A bobcat eliminated the frogs, mice, voles and rabbits as suspects. A bear (which the computer hastily deleted as soon as Jazz swooped close) eliminated almost everything else, and he doubted that a Prowl drenched in can't-find-me and don't-bother-me vibes would choose to be a bear.

Jazz wished he could just comm Hound, but that would defeat the purpose.

Which left Jazz with a puzzle. Prowl always had known how to cheer him up.

Maybe he was hiding as a cop car and that's why there was no gaps in the food chains? Except, no. A Cybertronian would stand out like a dinobot at a petting zoo in these woods. An owl'd hear the engine noise from miles away, even if he'd found someplace where a car wouldn't be seen.

He actually landed on a nearby pine tree and had been wondering what was odd about what he was seeing for several minutes when he realized he'd found his answer. What sort of critter had nothing to fear from everything from bats to bears? That no Autobot would come looking for or risk poking on the off chance it was their wayward tactician? Who's threat was mostly nonphysical and so the VR realm wouldn't automatically delete it from the world, but everyone knew not to bother?

If I were an antisocial tactician, what would I be?

A skunk.

And not one of the cutsie squirrel-sized skunks that always hung out around Fluttershy's house, but a big fluffy creature with a dramatic stripe down his back that could probably outright maul any bear that wasn't deterred by the threat of stink.

Silently he glided down to do a dramatic pass over the skunk's back, skimming thick fur with soft wing feathers, then a swift wing-over to land in a whirl of feathers on the ground facing the skunk, which glared his beady eyes in threat. He was one of the larger owls, but a large owl was still small enough to take some damage from a skunk's teeth and claws. Jazz fluffed his feathers in victory when the VR computer didn't immediately delete the "threat".

"Hey Prowler," He said softly, "Found ya."

The skunk shook himself, beady eyes narrowing further for a moment. In this form he didn't have any doorwings to telegraph his moods, but that tail worked almost as well and Jazz could see the exact moment Prowl relaxed and accepted his company. "So you did."

.  
.

End


	13. Taking Risks

Short ficlet. tf_rare_pairing: G1 Cliffjumper / Mirage - daredevils

.

.

**Taking****Risks **

.

.

.

Cliffjumper was a risk taker. It was right there in his name: One who jumps off cliffs. Look before you leap? Pfft. Leap before you look. Cause it really didn't matter where you were going to land; once you were in the air, your fate was written. All your caution was just slag in the wind. He'd survive because he was small and tough and knew how to bounce, and who cared about the potential injuries. Ratchet was the best of the best. Worry was for fraidy-scraplets.

And if there were 'Cons at the bottom of the jump, all the better. Like shooting mechano-fish in an oil barrel. Decepticons never expected Autobots to come swooping down from on top of them. Something about Autobots being mostly unable to fly. Pfft. As if. Find him a cliff, or a building or a canyon and Cliffjumper'd show them how to not-fly. Death From Above all the way.

Mirage wasn't really a risk taker. It was right there in his name: The illusion that can never be caught. He didn't earn that name by jumping off high precipices and landing on top of Decepticons. He was the type to carefully climb down a cliff, or better yet just snipe them from on top it. By the time they found his perch, he'd be somewhere else. That's what he did. That's who he was.

But it hadn't always. And every once in a while, he and Cliffjumper would go out and remind themselves of just who he'd been before he couldn't be caught.

.

.

End


	14. Velvet

Summary: Jazz convinces Prowl to do something he's not entirely comfortable with, and they both find a bit of home on an alien world.

For the prowlxjazz livejournal community anniversary challenge.

Prompt: Our oreos need to recharge like all other Cybertronians. Now in this world, recharging involves plugging yourself into the main computer system for proper defragmentation. While your processor gets recharged, your consciousness is put into a virtual reality world created by the main computer system. (Think holodeck on Startrek, except instead of walking into a room they're plugging themselves in directly). Cybertronians can interact with others plugged into the system or choose not to interact with any other recharging mech/femme by changing the settings prior to entering recharge (important if a mech/mechs want privacy). This system is controlled by artificial intelligence and reacts according to each mech's needs/wishes/desires.

In this VR world, Cybertronians can use their holo avatars to become anything/anyone they want. Animal, human, organic, go wild, be creative!

.

.

.

**Velvet **

.

.

"Are you certain about this?" Prowl looked at the dark crack in the earth almost hidden at the bottom of a rough, rocky pit. She secured her hair in a short tight pony tail that would keep it out of the way. She had resisted the temptation to color her human hair the same black as his plating and chosen a rust red color instead. At first after waking on Earth, she'd kept it cropped close to her head, then had crafted it into a curly mane that went almost to her knees, then finally she'd settled on a conservative shoulder length. Praxans weren't flyers and did not have either sky-hunger or claustrophobia. That didn't mean she was comfortable with the thought of any space too small for her doorwings. Even in a dream. "If we—_you_decided to do something else, Teletraan would accommodate us."

Jazz continued checking the buckles and straps of their safety equipment. Several legs of this journey, including this first, would require climbing gear. "If you don't want to go spelunking, just say so."

"It's not that I don't want to," she hedged. "I'm…" she steeled herself. "No. We're going. It took years to secure permission for a surveillance drone to scan the cave system so we could do this." They hadn't told the government precisely _how_ the 'bots intended to use the scans, save that saying that they were interested in exploring the caves and were understandably much too large to do so personally. The geologists among them were already using the scans in what the humans would consider a much more conventional manner, but this VR rendering was normal for Autobots. Jazz, Bumblebee and the others who were more social with the inhabitants of their borrowed planet had all agreed that it was not a good idea to let on to the average human just how close the Autobots had to a hive mind in the form of the VR worlds they shared each night. "I'm just… Praxans don't do well underground."

Jazz's silky, curly short hair the color of obsidian fluttered even now in every stray breeze (which kept anyone from considering the style conventional) as he fussed with Prowl's headlamp. It gave her an excellent view of the exquisite detail of Jazz's eyes, which she knew Jazz had spent months carefully rendering in a dozen minutely different shades of green to appear precisely human. Prowl's own eyes were the more flat blue that had been common among the Autobots' human renderings when they had first experimented with human forms in the VR realm, though she kept thinking she should spend a night or two making them appear more realistic. She never did because she liked the role reversal. Jazz's exquisitely detailed eyes were expressive in a way his visor could never match, and Prowl's flat blue eyes more visor-like than her natural optics, especially after she'd chased that thought thread down and heightened the effect by adding a pair of gold-rimmed glasses to her favored human appearance.

Which right now were replaced by a thicker, heavier pair that were more easily secured for the descent.

"Fortunately," his hands roamed over Prowl in one last check of the equipment. If something went wrong, it wouldn't actually harm them; they'd just be stuck until morning when their recharge cycles ended, but that was not a desired outcome. "Polyhexians are built for underground. I'll keep us safe. Check my harness for me?"

"Of course." Jazz's helmet had a light, and he had the same number of spares Prowl did, but she doubted he would turn them on. He was too used to sight in perfect darkness, and to hearing good enough to turn every accidental echo into a map of their surroundings, Teletraan could not override that certainty even when Jazz was dreaming of being human or anything else. It was no coincidence that Jazz had a tendency to choose forms that naturally had both exceptional night sight and hearing. Once down there, Jazz would be able to hear walls in the air currents around them and see perfectly well by Prowl's light.

His own senses were more focused toward deriving information from the winds that swept across the Praxan plains, and were too tied up in his doorwings for Teletraan to translate to this human dream-form.

Why Prowl had agreed to this was not a mystery. He and Jazz had been in the rec room, himself having been convinced to take one of his rare breaks. For once there had been little enough going on. The weather was hot, the Oregon desert deciding to suddenly remind them all that this was a _desert_. Temperatures of a hundred degrees, _inside the base_, had not been uncommon over the week. As usual this was making tempers flare, potentially into outright violence. Arranging patrol schedules had been an exercise in social compatibility that never failed to give Prowl an aching processor.

As not-usual the temperatures were so hot that everyone was hiding from the heat when not on-duty. Those who'd managed to install cooling units in their personal quarters didn't come out except during mealtimes. Those inclined had taken to "exploring" the caves beneath the _Ark_. The Dinobots, whose systems actually seemed to like the heat, sunned themselves on the rocks outside.

All this meant the rec room had been unusually empty except Prowl and Jazz. And Hound.

Hound didn't mind the heat so much, but most of the creatures living around the _Ark_ did, so he had been taking advantage of the unusually empty rec room to constantly marathon his favorite documentaries. This was fine with Prowl. Better than cartoons.

Prowl's own systems also didn't mind the heat as much as those from Iacon did, but preferred that heat come with the stinging winds that would help cool his systems via his doorwings. In absence of that, he flapped the appendages gently to keep the heat evaporating away. He was more worried about Jazz, whose systems hadn't been designed for even the normal range of temperatures Earth had to offer. He didn't doubt the other black and white was one of those taking refuge beneath the _Ark_. There were times Prowl thought that the only reason Jazz had ever come up out of those caves after the crash was because he was a social bot at spark; with so many of the other Autobots joining him down there it was a wonder he'd come up long enough to pester Prowl into taking his energon outside his office.

Jazz's gasp had been what drew his attention to Hound's program.

Thousands of delicate white crystals spilled across the screen in a montage of images. Fragile branching trees of rock. Rainbows from the camera's lights glinted off of a tumble of clear crystal — quartz? There was no way to know from the footage — of exquisite quality. Gypsum (apparently, though he was not used to thinking of that rock as being clear) grew from the walls in surprisingly organic shapes that nevertheless caught and held a Praxan's attention. Still pools of water produced yet different shapes and colors growing at the edges. Someone had been narrating, but Prowl hadn't the processor to hear.

Alien and wild though they were, it was like looking at images of the crystal gardens again. A pang of awe, homesickness and longing went though his spark. A pang that had not gone unnoticed by Jazz.

And of course, unlike the Praxan crystal gardens, this was a cave. Jazz would never be satisfied by mere images on a screen. It had taken the charming 'bot years of negotiation to get permission for Teletraan's surveillance drones to scan the cave system and he'd had to both demonstrate that the little things were capable of doing so without disturbing so much as a drop of water and promise to have them map additional passages too small for humans to venture.

The most beautiful of all caves. Lechuguilla. Prowl didn't want to settle for mere images either.

"Ready," she said, finishing the check of Jazz's climbing harness, lights and other equipment.

Together they descended into the dark.

This wasn't really the first time Jazz had convinced her to go caving in the VR realm with him, though all those times before had been back on Cybertron with Jazz sharing memories of Polyhex's half above-ground, mostly below buildings and courtyards and workshops. Praxans were considered religious by the more "liberal" Iaconians and more "practical" Kaonex, but in Prowl's experiences, through Jazz's, his own people had little devotion in comparison to the strange Polyhexians, though on the surface it seemed the other way around. _Surface_ being the most salient term of that statement. Praxans built grand temples and diligently observed every one of the holy holidays of Primus and the Primes with more dedication than all but the most strict cults of other cities; Polyhexians built _down_ to feel closer to the spark of their god and dedicated every work, large and small, to their patron-Primes. Few holidays were observed, but there was a day-to-day devotion Prowl had admired.

This was the first time Jazz had taken her into an Earth-cave while in human avatars, though surely this could not be the first time he'd done this himself. Those memories of Polyhex had conditioned her to expect quiet in the absence of mechanoid traffic in the unworked tunnels that twisted and winded around and through the city, and the Earthen cave was quiet compared to the living caverns of Polyhex, but not silent. Rustling and surprisingly loud squeaks echoed in the dark as their feet touched solid ground.

"Bats," Jazz whispered. With a touch he unerringly guided Prowl's light to the large cluster of furry bodies on the wall opposite their climbing gear. This wasn't the first time Prowl had seen the little nocturnal mammals, but never in such detail. Up at the _Ark_ they were always in motion when he saw them, which had a tendency to confuse his doorwing sensors, so he avoided them, watching only from a distance. Jazz, though, sought them out, going out to stand in their swirling clouds of wings at dusk. In no hurry, Prowl watched, fascinated for a while. She listened to the clicks and chirps knowing these were communication sounds, not those made for their famous echolocation. Maybe one of these nights she'd have Teletraan create a bat avatar for her. A bird's knowledge of air currents was the closest an Earth creature could come to seeing the world as Prowl did with his doors and Jazz had taken those forms several times; a bat came the closest to seeing, or more specifically, _hearing_ the world as Jazz did and seeing their wriggling little bodies now made Prowl curious.

Of course she _could_ just have Teletraan craft a Polyhexian avatar for her, but that had always seemed _invasive_ somehow, even when they'd been back on Cybertron.

A chuckle drew her attention. She had apparently been staring transfixed at the bats for so long that Jazz had finished securing their climbing gear for the rest of the descent. Sheepishly she followed her companion deeper into the dark.

The upper passages of Lechuguilla were dry, bare rock. The climbing gear was needed to descend to the next level of caverns, from the dry, bat-filled caves connected to the surface, to the stillness that was their destination.

It was much cooler inside at the bottom than outside, or even than it was in the upper portion of the cave, but also much more humid. Prowl wasn't used to the idea that humidity that wasn't acidic would be bothersome but as a human avatar she was keenly aware of how sweat gathered under her clothing and soaked her hair. It wasn't hot but even the slightest movement was a tiny breeze that brought no relief.

In contrast to the movement of the bats above, down here it utterly silent. Thick oppressive silence. All she heard was the beating her her heart, her breathing, the blood rushing in her ears. In that silence the walls closed in and pressed against her skin. With nothing to see and nothing outside her own skin to hear, panic slowly sank its claws into her mind.

"Hey," Jazz broke the silence and almost desperately she focused on him. He was outside herself, and that pushed the walls back. "You okay?"

It was obvious she was not, but she answered, "Yes," anyway. "Just… keep talking."

"Yea… I get ya. Happens sometimes to newsparks and visitors." He drawled gently. "Too little outside yourself and your own senses trap you. Let's sit." They leaned against the wall, or rather, Prowl did. The texture of the rock against her hands grounded her. Jazz started pacing around the space, tapping the rock walls. Not echolocation, she nevertheless started painting an image based on those taps. "Actually grew up in a place not too different than this. My creator was a geologist. We checked the stability of the uninhabited caverns for future building projects. Very quiet."

"Was that what you did before becoming an Autobot?" Jazz's records lacked that particular detail.

"Nope. Quiet was fine, but I liked music better."

Prowl was calming. The conversation gave her something to focus on. "That's not an answer."

"Was too. You gotta ask the right question."

Alright. She could do that, if only so Jazz would keep talking. "What were you doing before joining the Autobots?"

Jazz looked back, framed by the beam of light from her headlamp. "Lot's of stuff. This and that…"

"Unemployed?" That made some sense. There weren't any records of employment and clever Jazz could have learned much on the streets.

"Uh…" Jazz shifted back and forth in the headlamp, tapping the wall almost indecisively. "Not really." Why was he so reluctant to talk about it? "You ready to press on? First crystals shouldn't be too far up ahead."

She wanted to continue asking Jazz about the past he so rarely hinted at, but was reluctant to press when he so obviously didn't want to talk about it. And the panic had fully receded. She was ready to press on.

Her battle computer was shut off for recharge, but she couldn't help but calculate how long it would take for her to get back if something went wrong. If she could get back. They squeezed through some incredibly tight spaces and used the climbing gear several more times to rappel down passages and over cliffs and she could see and hear Jazz flitting back and forth, exploring shallow side passages with a daring Prowl could not afford. Perhaps he could find another way out, but for her the only exit was the way they'd come in, with all its attendant squeezes and climbs which she was certain she could not navigate on her own. If something went wrong, she would be stuck until Teletraan woke her in the morning.

This was different than crawling through the Polyhexian passages on Cybertron. So much could go wrong. Earth was unstable; she only had to look at the volcano beneath the _Ark,_ and their imprisonment in the crust after the crash, to extrapolate that much.

She was almost getting ready to panic again, when she saw it.

Beautiful and and more delicate than any Praxan crystal, tiny branches of calcium carbonate spreading outward from a central stalactite. It looked like a snowflake.

"Prowl? Not panicking on me again are you?" Jazz came even with her, "You—oh. Well, isn't that wonderful?"

It was all she could do to breathe out an agreement.

"Worth it?"

Prowl tore her eyes away from the delicate crystal and looked into Jazz's human eyes. "Of course."

.

.

End


	15. Hush Now

Summary: "He had fallen, been shot down by Autobot warp cannons and now he was dying."

This is in response to a writing challenge (and since FF.n doesn't like urls, you'll have to head to this story on my Ao3 page, pseud dragonofdispair, to get the link) which 12drakon passed on to me because we'd been discussing something similar. The gist of the challenge was this: first write a short fic using strait forward language and avoid metaphor, then rewrite the same events using poetic language and metaphor.

I chose to do a small, but significant, event in the timeline of my TFPrime Shattered Glass 'verse. First part is Starscream's perspective while the second is from Prowl's (and anyone who's read my TFP SG fics should know that version of Prowl is pretty unhinged, so be prepared for that).

.

.

**Hush Now**

.

.

.

_Drifting' (drifting') off to sleep!_

_Let the joy of dream land find you!_

— My Little Pony "_Hush Now Lullaby"_

.

.

.

Part One: Literal - Starscream

.

The transition from offline to online was pain.

This twisted, half-aware state could not be called online, but neither was it the timeless dark of unconsciousness so that's what Starscream's HUD called it. Online.

Damages scrolled across his HUD, too numerous to keep up with. They blended together into a sharp suffering and a stark knowledge. He was dying.

His chronometer was one of the thing broken by the crash so he did not know how long he lived with that knowledge. He had fallen, been shot down by Autobot warp cannons and now — an endless now that stretched forever without his chronometer to tell him otherwise — he was dying.

Desperate not to go quietly into death he struggled to listen. He could not move, not speak, nor even transmit so much as a simple distress call. Listening was all he had but even that failed him, There were no sounds of battle. Not the high shriek of combat ready engines and weapons' fire. Not the deep percussive _boom_ of artillery and warp cannons. Not even the static of his own broken comm suite receiving encrypted messages he could no longer understand. Just the sounds of one seeker dying in the dark.

Was he already dead? Was this darkness all there was for an extinguished ember?

He teetered on the edge of belief when something — something new, something _else_ — intruded on his silent death.

It started with a skitter, a couple scraps of metal tumbling from somewhere above to bounce with the tiny _pinging_ sounds of metal on metal across his frame and away deeper into Cybertron. He onlined his optics — when had he turned them off? — and saw in their reflected glow _something_looming out of the dark above him, its own gold optics dim and weak.

He couldn't shriek, or scramble away. He couldn't target it with his null rays or cluster bombs. He couldn't even whimper in fear as the mech-shape crawled closer down the wall.

_Hmm Hmm Hm-mm Hm Hm Hm Hmmm-hm. Hmm Hm Hm-mm Hm Hm Hmm._

The cadence of an alien song, it vibrated across the metal and into his frame.

His optics did not produce enough light to see many details and one was cracked, both it's light and the data gleaned from it were intermittent. But his failing processor tried to catalogue the specifics of this apparition. Was it a dark mad Autobot or a stumbling lost Decepticon? Or more likely, was it something else entirely? Were those wings, or did the primer-grey metal simply fade away into the dark? Was that a splash of red above yellow optics or just a glitch of his dying mind?

Were those words, or just the hallucination of an ember that didn't want to die alone.

"What is this? Has the Star fallen? Gamma song.. a tortured death shriek… the banshee wail of a far-distant sun?" The mech-thing crept onto Starscream's form, an apparition with tangible weight that pressed him against the sharp metal of the crevasse where he'd fallen.

_Hm Hm Hm Hm-m, Hm Hm Hmm-m Hm Hm Hmm Hmm Hm Hm Hmmm…_ vibrations, more felt than heard, resumed as the mech-thing licked away a dirty streak of energon. _Hm_…lick…_Hm Hm_…lick… _Hm Hm HmHmr Hmkmm…_

Starscream wanted to protest becoming prey to some scavenger of the deep but only a thin stream of static emerged from the effort. The creature only nuzzled him in a parody of affection, some sharp edge on its helm making scratches in already damaged metal. "_Hush now, quiet now. It's time to lay your sleepy head…"_ a different song, a different melody, no more suited to the Cybertronian language than the humming which resumed along with the feeding a moment later.

Was this real? Or a dream?

The apparition drank from the nearest wound and as though the greater access to its victim's energon gave it strength, the humming finally resolved into words: "_I will always do my duty, no mater what the price…"_

.

.

.

Part Two: Metaphoric - Prowl

.

No light shone in the veins of a forgotten god, but the thunder of distant battle, the promise of blood spilled, was a siren's call to a starving fire. The banshee wail of a star falling to earth was the promise of another orn's survival. The comet-tail across a sky it couldn't see was a beacon.

What was that song? It was important, it knew. A message across forever, the beginning of a tale. A Call… but who was the call for? For this one? The prey? Or another? Some future thread not yet woven.

The prey was already close to death when it found it. God's blood spilled across bloody metal, flickering with the cadence of a dying fire. Around them, silence was a heavy stone. Silence it shattered with the questions and answers it already knew as well as it knew the pathways of the _Other's_ever shifting form. It tried the names, but they didn't fit the thread that wound through the shards of rust before him "…Gamma-song…?" No that wasn't right.

It didn't matter. Food was food. God's blood spilled, wasted as it always was after the killing field was abandoned.

It crept closer, listening to the violin-shriek of the _Other_ across the strings of reality. The _Other _always had something to say about each death. Each thread ripped from the tapestry of mathematics that had become its reality was a redefinition of _self_, so tied up was it in alien perspective of its own creator. The shriek was louder now; this one was a vital structure of the weave, as much a lure as the promise of blue light spilled from its veins. Quietly it sang along, alien melodies that reached across time and space, through the void to the Call it knew was coming.

It touched too-cool plating and a life fanned out before it, a flutter of ambition and betrayal, there and gone in the snap of a courtesan's wrist, leaving behind the twisted form of a loyal soldier. A reflection, shattered, given its chance to prostrate before the judgement seat, wings twitching before the eyes of a thousand observers beyond the veil of story and myth.

Which one was this? It was all jumbled up, a story that had been told again and again but shattered into shards of glass by the death flailing of a mortal and a god.

Which one was this? Hero or dragon? Ally, enemy, trickster, betrayer…? It didn't matter. Life spilled from its veins and the pondering of higher thought was a lost cause compared to the needs of a form that was all it had left of _before_. Metal tasted of sunlight and dying wishes. It starved for the sunlight, so long has it been since it tasted it on its own metal, but the stars sang on the surface. The sun screamed. Dense mathematics plucked out a tune that drove it from the light of the endless depths above and deeper into the womb of its race, closer to the fire that birthed them all. The food stirred, a weak whine of feeble protest, but it did not hurt its prey and it the violin-shriek across the strings of stardust changed long enough to sooth away pain and protest. "Hush now…"

It knew the body of the _Other_. It was a sleeping sword, a slumbering shield, against the dangers of the void. Somewhere up there, in the sunlight it starved for, the _Enemy_ waited for the moment of its own awakening.

What was that song? It hasn't been written yet, never been heard, but the Call was coming. It was the call, an echo of memory spurring the stranger… who is he? who is he?… the hero to take the first step down the path to eternity. Come. Come. I await you in the belly of the whale.

What was this? Yes… food. The song agreed. Strings of stardust connect every point of a spider's web, but it is only a parasite living off the aftermath of battle, corpses building cathedrals to the lengths mortals and gods would go to to preserve their own self-centered existence, blood dripping into the metal for scavengers. Filthy, dirty scavengers that crawled through the veins of the _Other_ and burrowed up from the depths to challenge mortal heroes. Except it wasn't the monster, not a challenge to be slain, but a trickster-guide. It was its duty to deliver the Call.

What was that song again?

.

.

.

End


End file.
